mdominguez2nd’s Techdirt Profile

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Statutes determine what child porn "is." Here's a link to NY Penal Law Article 263 "Sexual Performance by a Child." As far as identifying whether individuals portrayed are children, that's likely left to law enforcement and other experts/professionals. The issue with that however, comes down to "morphed" images - those that involve a performer of legal age made to look like they are underage through CGI. I'm sure there are all sorts of mathematical algorithms used to identify the age of people in pictures. As far as the databases are concerned, you can already find these in forensics labs.

Also, those who get caught usually have their viewing habits extend from their digital lives to their physical ones. Take the conviction of NJ State Assemblyman Neil Cohen for example; he printed it out images of child pornography in his office and kept them in his desk. Did his viewing extend into his physical life? Yes. Did he get caught? Yes. Would he have gotten caught if he maintained the separation between physical and digital? Well, he was dumb enough to do it in his office... Also, look at the "To Catch a Predator" series - those guys bring their digital life into their physical one.

DBs such as the one mentioned are already in use by forensic labs across the country (and perhaps world) to do a hash comparison of images found on a suspect's devices. Yes, alteration of a single bit will change the hash, and there is always the extremely small chance of a clash, but this has potential to identify known images that HAVEN'T been altered by advanced users. You guys pointed out work arounds for these advanced users, but in the grand scheme of things, its usually the "dumb" ones that get caught. This isn't a bad idea at all, but its usually the implementation that tends to make these ideas a waste of taxpayer money.

All I see is a lot of uneducated parents allowing their children to have access to various forms of technology that enable this behavior. When bullying was still in our physical lives, students were punished, usually at home and at school. Now that we have this other digital life to interact with, there is a degree of anonymity and a self empowered sense of invulnerability that everyone has.

"Social networking" does nothing but provide another medium for bullying. It allows those too weak to do anything in person to hide behind a computer screen and think they are big and bad.

A wise person once said "There can be no justice without punishment." How is punishment acheived in this digital realm? Take it away. CHILDREN should not be allowed to have the use of technology without supervision. They are too immature, too young, and not smart enough to understand how vulnerable they are to the threats within this digital life.

The schools and educators are just helpless here b/c a majority of the drama that transpires on these social networking sites stems from events at the schools. Where does their authority to investigate and punish end?

Society and technology enables this behavior. We have no one else to blame but ourselves.

I agree with you 100% I'm not suggesting its right for Amazon to do this, I'm just pointing out that its legal. I wish I had my books here so that I could point to a couple cases where such an issue was challenged and shot down by the court.

Epectations of privacy have changed dramatically since Olmstead and Katz. Law isn't up to date with technology and society.

Here's a hypothetical - You post some awesome pictures up on Facebook. Someone sees these pictures and offeres you money for them b/c they are so great. Since you use Facebook to store your pics, you download it from the album, and send a copy, digital or otherwise, to this person who in turn sends you money.

This information - billing info - isn't private. The issue is that these digital dossiers create a profile of the person based on their consumer habits. Ths is what people feel is an invasion of privacy but is really profiling based on their digital activity, not physical.

I'm not saying this is right, or wrong. It IS perfectly legal. People expect a degree of anonymity when doing things on the internet. There is no person to person activity, its all through a medium. When people realize that the not-so-private nature of their activities results in a profile of them, that's when they raise hell. Those Jane Doe claims are all reasonable, but as mentioned, there is nothing illegal about them. By using the internet in such a way, you essentially accept this risk.

Also, do a search for "Total Information Awareness Program" - stuff like this has and likely is being done by the gov't as we speak.

Unencrypted data transmissions beg to be looked at. If you fail to encrypt your data transmissions then you're asking for problems. I suppose there is one big issue here:
- what degree of privacy (if any) do you have by allowing your data to be transmitted over an open connection

Considering how up-to-date the 4th Amendment is, I'm sure this isn't going to be a problem... Not.

So, its unclear whether or not Google intended on capturing the data or not. That is irrelevent. What people are going to have an issue with, is the fact that data WAS captured and they don't know what will happen to the data - anything from destruction to misuse by a disgruntled employee are probable. The latter is what runs through the minds of people when they realize data they were sending was captured.

As far as privacy is concerned, this doesn't seem to be so much a privacy issue as perhaps a wiretap issue or even a trespassing issue - altho I'm sure open Wifi could be considered public so it may not even be an issue in that case.

Bottom line is people expect something as "invisible" as wireless data transmission to actually be private. Why would anyone go to Panera or Starbucks to perform credit card transactions in the first place?

This IS a problem. There is clearly some sort of "reasonable expectation of privacy" breach and may also give rise to other 4th Amendment protections such as search and seizure.

There may be no physical link between myself and a crime scene with the exception of a piece of DNA that would normally show up as having "no match" in CODIS. But, if a family member has submitted DNA for whatever reason, a "partial match" starts poiting arrows in my direction. The question here is where does "partial" fit in? Is there probable cause for a warrant? Does this make me "guilty by association?" Where is the line drawn between law enfocement getting the job done and my rights being violated?

Legislation is in place to give law enforcement the proper tools to effectively go about their job while also protecting the rights and civil liberties of those affected by law enfocement. And again, in supporting law enforcement, technology successfully erodes our rights and civil liberties.